House of Open Wounds

The story is set in a world where the Palleseen Sway, a rationalist empire that has abolished religion, wages war against the Loruthi. The Palleseen army stores magic in small golden lozenges called tablethi, which power weapons, lamps, and constructs. Conquered peoples serve as conscripted soldiers called Accessories, marked by pale uniforms.

The narrative centers on an experimental field hospital attached to Forthright Battalion, run by Ollery, a rotund former alchemist holding the senior conscript rank of Chief Accessory and known as the Butcher. His staff includes Alv, a Divinati healer from the Divine City who holds the rank of Guest-Adjutant; her sympathetic magic allows her to absorb patients' wounds onto her own body. Tallifer, an elderly former priestess of the Jarokiri people, serves as surgeon, her tiny fire-god Mazdek the Chastising Flame licking instruments clean. Lochiver, Tallifer's companion and priest of the rot-god Sturge, plays a dissonant flute that draws infection from wounds. Banders, a perpetually promoted and demoted orderly, handles logistics. Their commanding officer is Prassel, a necromancer with the command rank of Fellow-Inquirer, who reanimates the hospital's dead as expendable soldiers. The hospital is a tenuous experiment: an unorthodox use of conquered peoples' religious healing, tolerated only because it keeps soldiers alive.

Into this arrangement arrives Yasnic, a nervous man from the conquered city of Ilmar, whom Banders dubs "Maric Jack." He carries a wooden box on his back housing three tiny, abandoned gods visible only to him: God, a cantankerous deity; a nameless nature spirit of bundled twigs; and the Fisher King, a grim figure with a bone harpoon. Jack was once God's priest but lost his faith. He discovered he could see all gods and began smuggling abandoned deities from Ilmar to save them from Pal "Ratcatcher" squads that harvest divine energy. The Pals caught him and offered enlistment or execution.

Jack proves useful during emergencies. When a critically wounded spy arrives with a supernatural wound, God heals the man without permission, on the condition the healed man do no harm. Jack tries to warn the spy, but when the man opens his mouth to share military intelligence, the healing reverses and he dies instantly. Jack is whipped and arrested. Thurrel, a Decanter (a specialist who drains divine power from objects and beings) with the rank of Fellow-Archivist, examines Jack but finds little power in him. Maserley, a demonist with the rank of Fellow-Invigilator, accompanied by his bound succubus Caeleen, also takes interest. Prassel reclaims Jack from both men.

During a major offensive, the hospital operates at full capacity. Alv pushes herself to blindness absorbing injuries. A Loruthi counterattack sends a massive horned war-beast through the medical tent, shattering Lochiver's leg and nearly killing Jack. The nature god distracts the mercenaries riding the beast, and God heals Jack without being asked. Jack, Masty (the hospital's quiet orderly), and Banders are stranded behind enemy lines. They link up with Pal soldiers including the sharp-minded Lidlet and the volatile Klimmel. After a skirmish leaves both mortally wounded, Jack forces God to heal them by threatening to abandon his faith. The soldiers swear to do no harm, and the group escapes on captured horses.

The battalion redeploys on a Gallete island, a flying landmass controlled by a conquered people. God grows defiant about the prohibition on healing. Klimmel gets into a brawl and dies when his healed wound returns. Sage-Monitor Runkel, the battalion commander, forbids Jack from healing and sentences him to lashes. Lidlet transfers to the hospital as a stretcher bearer, reasoning she can serve without fighting. Caeleen visits Jack on Maserley's orders to seduce him, but Jack reveals he is no longer a priest, and Caeleen exploits a gap in her contract to report failure.

The battalion arrives in Bracinta, a kingdom split between Pal and Loruthi influence, joining Landwards Battalion to advance on the city of Magnelei. During leave, a Bracite loyalist named General Halseder recognizes Masty and takes him to the Wolf Palace. Masty reveals his true identity: He is Feder the Fourth, the lost heir to Bracinta's Hackle Throne, taken by the Pals as a child. "Masty" is a corruption of "Majesty." Despite pressure, he returns to the army. Separately, Jack learns the Butcher's secret: Ollery poisoned an entire regimental dinner at Revelation House to avenge officers' affair with his wife. Meanwhile, Pirisytes, an Accessory of the Oloumanni people who secretly serves a chaos god called Zenotheus, kidnaps Jack and Tallifer for sacrifice but releases them after Jack demonstrates knowledge of the cult.

In a catastrophic battle outside Magnelei, Prassel helps run an experimental ghost warfare program under her superior Stiverton. Alv's students, led by the ambitious Callow, twist sympathetic healing into a weapon, transferring injuries into targeted enemies at range. God begins healing soldiers independently, defying Jack and the Palleseen command hierarchy. Lidlet prays to God and receives healing for her wounded friend Foley. The nature god sacrifices itself to save Jack and Masty from a Loruthi squad.

Maserley has Jack arrested for sedition and confiscates his box of gods. Thurrel appears to drain all three gods' power into tablethi, and Maserley gloats that God is dead. Jack, for the first time in his life as a pacifist, swears vengeance against Maserley. However, God survives and returns. Cosserby, the Sonorist who maintains the battalion's automata, discovers he can no longer facilitate harm, having been unknowingly healed by Lidlet's prayers. Prassel murders Stiverton by sabotaging his protective robe and takes over Landwards' necromancy department. Alv, devastated by what her teaching has produced, kills Callow by reflecting his own weapon back at him through sympathetic magic.

The senior staff execute an escape, aided by the hospital's various gods and Cosserby's automata. Lochiver is shot and killed. Cosserby dies when his healed wound returns after his automata engage in combat, a consequence of God's prohibition on harm. Thurrel finds the fugitives and reveals he secretly preserved all three gods, substituting his own stored reserves. The Fisher King has claimed Banders as its follower because she once struck its statue as a child in an Archipelago orphanage, making her the unwitting inheritor of the Pals' own forgotten god. Masty announces he will return to Magnelei and accept the crown out of duty to his friends.

At the coronation feast, the Butcher poisons all the food, but Lidlet announces that every guest has been healed by God's blessing through the toast. The poison is neutralized, but the healing carries God's condition: Any harmful action brings the poison back. A Pal officer tests this by shooting at Lidlet and drops dead. Maserley, who did not eat, tries to alert soldiers outside, but Caeleen commands him to kneel: Zenotheus, in a final act of chaos, switched the names of master and servant on Maserley's contract with her. She orders him to "go home," and he is dragged into the Realms Below, the demonic underworld from which Caeleen was summoned. Caeleen is free.

The healed officers of both armies cannot command violence without dying. Masty advises them to negotiate peace. The department scatters. Lidlet departs with God to spread a covert pacifist faith through the military, guided by her pamphlet on the loopholes of divine obligation. Jack relinquishes his bond with God, acknowledging Lidlet as the better steward. Banders returns to the army with Prassel, forming an uneasy alliance. Ollery, Tallifer, and Alv set out as traveling healers. Caeleen, free for the first time, chooses to travel with Jack, and they walk out of the Wolf Palace together.